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13 September 2005 4:14 PM

As is to be expected, I have been making my fair share of Spanish mistakes. Here are a few of my recent best:

At dinner with my Bolivian family, I was recounting a story from high school. I said, “Cuando tenía cinquenta y cinco años,” and I saw my family try to surpress smirks. When I asked if I said something funny, Jorge pointed out that I said, “When I was 55 years old…” instead of “When I was 15 years old.”

Yesterday in class my professor asked “¿Cómo estás?” (“How are you?”) I replied, “No estoy tan casado que ayer.” Of course, what I meant to say was, “No estoy tan cansado que ayer.” Ah, what a difference a letter can make. I meant to say “I’m not as tired as yesterday,” but said instead, “I’m not as married as yesterday.”

My Bolivian mom asked where I got my new textbook. I held it up and replied, “I bought this word today at school.”

I have made quite a few mistakes like that last one, substituting random words everywhere. Maybe that will start to clear up in a few weeks? ¡Espero que sí! (“I hope so!”)

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Ryan does stuff and writes about it here. He studied philosophy at Notre Dame and worked afterwards with Holy Cross Associates in Chile. Some of his interests are technology, design, and photography. He was a student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and currently works as an engineer at Slack.

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